Autonomous Vehicle- A Fascinating Technology!

The rise of the automobile transformed modern society. It changed where we live, what we buy, how we work, and who we call friends. As cars and trucks became commonplace, they created whole classes of jobs and made other professions obsolete.

We are now on the cusp of an equally transformative technological shift in transportation: from vehicles driven by humans to vehicles that drive themselves. The long-term impact of autonomous vehicles on society is hard to predict, but also hard to overstate. The only certainty is that wherever this technology becomes ubiquitous, life will be different.

Google and other companies have been testing self-driving cars for several years now, with good success. ‘

These autonomous vehicles process vast amounts of sensory data from on-board radars, cameras, GPS, and stored maps to navigate routes through ever more complex and rapidly changing traffic situations without any human involvement.

Consumer use of vehicles with autonomous capabilities, however, is just beginning. Adoption will proceed gradually, through the steady implementation of increasingly intelligent safety and convenience features in otherwise ordinary cars. Last October, Tesla Motors made available a software package that enables a limited form of self-driving operation for owners of its vehicles to download.

Self-driving systems may have bugs—the software that runs them is complicated—but they are free from the myriad distractions and risk-taking behaviors that are the most common causes of crashes today. In the near term, semi-autonomous safety systems that engage only to prevent accidents, but that otherwise leave the driver in charge, will also likely reduce the human cost of driving significantly.

Far more profound transformations will follow once cars and trucks can be trusted to pilot themselves routinely—even with no one inside.Like every technology, autonomous vehicles will involve drawbacks as well. In some distant day, commercial driving may no longer be a sustainable career. But the many benefits of self-driving cars and trucks are so compelling that their widespread adoption is a question of when, not if.